Courtney Rydel

Assistant Professor of English

Courtney E. Rydel

Education

I hold an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D. 2012, M.A. 2008), with certificates from the Center for Teaching and Learning and a certificate in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. I earned my B.A. in English, summa cum laude, with minors in Creative Writing and Classics from The College of New Jersey (2006).

Research

With Jennie Carr, professor in Biology, we’re engaged in an ongoing project on medieval birds, specifically how medieval conceptions of birds compare to modern-day scientific knowledge. We’ve discovered that poetry, specifically Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls, incorporates more accurate observations of bird behavior than the supposed “expert” sources at the time. We have given a joint talk on this research, and had an interactive gallery exhibit at the Sandbox gallery in Chestertown.

Recently I was interviewed for a documentary on “Deadly Journeys of the Apostles” that aired on the National Geographic Channel in the United States as well as being seen worldwide. This interview built on my expertise on the Legenda aurea or Golden Legend, a thirteenth-century collection of saints’ lives, as well as the teaching I do in the Bible as Literature class.

My current book project traces the British reception and translation of the Golden Legend, a collection of saints’ lives that becameone of the most popular medieval books. This understudied text contributed in important ways to models of gendered behavior and women’s piety, to the history of biblical translation and publishing, and to the development of authorial identity and tradition in English literature. This is the first study to give a sustained consideration to the English translations of the Golden Legend together, and to explore the role of women and gender specifically in the Golden Legend.

Publications

“The Collaborative Medievalist,” forthcoming in The Ballad of the Lone Medievalist essay collection, published by punctum books, Summer 2017.

“Interpretive Etymologies in Translations of the Golden Legend,” forthcoming in the Medieval Translator series (peer-reviewed essay collection), published by Brepols.

Review of Heresy Trials and English Women Writers, 1400-1670, in Recusant History: A Journal of Research in Post-Reformation Catholic History in the British Isles, 32.1 (May 2014): 126-8 (invited review).

“A Discovery of the Only Middle English Translation of the Legenda aurea Prologue,” Notes and Queries, New Series 60.4 (2013): 508-512.